Astronaut jennifer's lifeline to her spaceship comes loose and she finds herself stranded at a constant 100.0m from the spaceship. She throws her 2.00 kg wrench at 20.0 m/s in a direction away from the spaceship. If she and her spacesult have a combined mass of 200 kg how long does it take her to coast back to her spaceship?

Jul 26th 2006, 01:02 PM

CaptainBlack

Quote:

Originally Posted by maritza

Astronaut jennifer's lifeline to her spaceship comes loose and she finds herself stranded at a constant 100.0m from the spaceship. She throws her 2.00 kg wrench at 20.0 m/s in a direction away from the spaceship. If she and her spacesult have a combined mass of 200 kg how long does it take her to coast back to her spaceship?

Conservation of momentum tells us that her velocity is 0.2 m/s (the ratio of
wrench mass to her mass times the wrench velocity) towards her spacecraft,
so she takes 100/0.2=500 s to reach the spacecraft.